Best 1141 quotes in «historical quotes» category

Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

Earth Day is the first holy day...and is devoted to the harmony of nature... The celebration offends no historical calendar, yet it transcends them all.

Einstein and the Quantum is delightful to read, with numerous historical details that were new to me and cham1ing vignettes of Einstein and his colleagues. By avoiding mathematics, Stone makes his book accessible to general readers, but even physicists who are well versed in Einstein and his physics are likely to find new insights into the most remarkable mind of the modern era.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

Even if people tell me they have historical proof [that it is not historical], that doesn't really bother me.

Ever since my youth it has disturbed me that of the literary works that survived their own epoch, so many dealt with historical rather than contemporary subjects.

Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.

Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics ... would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

Every opera, because every opera is a unique slice of a particular perspective, historical perspective and psychological perspective if not musical style, and so forth, they all present different challenges. Some can be musically very challenging, some can be psychologically more challenging. There is always something that requires a pretty specific amount of energy and attention.

Fear has a far greater grasp on human action than the impressive weight of historical evidence.

Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

Fascinating, often hilarious, always devastatingly truthful, The Inconvenient Indian is destined to become a classic of historical narrative. For those who wish to better understand Native peoples, it is a must read. For those who don't wish to understand, it is even more so.

Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.

For nearly two centuries, scholars and politicians have debated the future of capitalism. Its critics, most prominent among them Karl Marx, have seen capitalism as intrinsically unstable, full of contradictions that will lead eventually to its collapse. Its supporters see it as the best way to allocate resources and rewards. Some even hint that the democratic capitalistic society is not just a phase in the historical evolution of economic systems but its ultimate end.

Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

For me archaeology is not a source of illustrations for written texts, but an independent source of historical information, with no less value and importance, sometimes more importance, that the written sources.

For me, the historical and genealogical library is the one I use. I'm working on, I'll say, it's a time travel novel. I haven't written very much of it. That's the dirty secret of the Cullman center: The writers don't write their fiction there, they just do their research.

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

For society as a whole, nothing comes as a "right" to which we are "entitled." Even bare subsistence has to be produced-and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.

Fortifications, artillery, foreign aid - will be of no value, unless the ordinary soldier knows that it is HE guarding his country

For everything is history: What was said yesterday is history, what was said a minute ago is history. But, above all, one is led to misjudge the present, because only the study of historical development permits the weighing and evaluation of the interrelationships among the components of the present-day society.

For historical currents do not irresistibly propel themselves and everyone in their path. No matter what their broader structural or ideological roots, they both carry along and are carried along by people, who are not merely passengers of history, but pilots as well.

For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.

For many women, the experience of prostitution stems from the historical trauma of colonization.

For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then.

For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death.

For we cannot adequately understand 'man' as an isolated biological creature, as a bundle of reflexes or a set of instincts, as an 'intelligible field' or a system in and of itself. Whatever else he may be, man is a social and an historical actor who must be understood, if at all, in close and intricate interplay with social and historical structures

From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control.

Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.

German dominance in the EU is a fact of life. But for historical reasons, it would be the last country to be swept away by a populist wave. And one thing is certain: If Germany goes down, Europe goes down, and with it all the values which we thought are worth living for. Germany has to be the champion of these values.

Given the ambiguity of religious texts and teachings, the mixed historical record, and the empirical evidence, it would be foolhardy to assert that religious faith necessarily upholds democratic values.

Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

Grape juice at the communion table symbolizes the historical impotence of Christ’s blood, Christ’s gospel, Christ’s church, and Christ’s expanding kingdom. Grape juice stays ‘bottled up’, confined to the historical skins of Palestine.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving.

He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

Historical experience is written in blood and iron.

Historical and public memory is not merely on the side of domination.